[Illustration: MISS ELLISON GREETED TOM WITH A MYSTERIOUS SMILE.
Frontispiece--Page 27]
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TOM SLADE WITH THE COLORS
BY
PERCY K. FITZHUGH
Author of
TOM SLADE, BOY SCOUT
TOM SLADE AT TEMPLE CAMP
TOM SLADE ON THE RIVER
Illustrated by
THOMAS CLARITY
Published With the Approval of
THE BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS : NEW YORK
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Copyright, 1918, by
GROSSET & DUNLAP
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Tom Makes a Promise 1
II. "Bull Head" and "Butter Fingers" 13
III. Roscoe Bent 21
IV. The Cup of Joy 27
V. The Main Trail 40
VI. Tom and the Gold Cross 49
VII. The Trail Runs Through a Pestilent Place 56
VIII. An Accident 60
IX. Roscoe Joins the Colors 66
X. Tom and Roscoe Come to Know Each Other 70
XI. Tom Meets a Stranger 79
XII. Tom Hears of the Blond Beast 85
XIII. As Others Saw Him 93
XIV. Tom Gets a Job 101
XV. The Excited Passenger 109
XVI. Tom Makes a Discovery 116
XVII. One of the Blond Beast's Weapons 124
XVIII. Sherlock Nobody Holmes 129
XIX. The Time of Day 137
XX. A New Job 145
XXI. Into the Danger Zone 152
XXII. S O S 160
XXIII. Roy Blakeley Keeps Still--For a Wonder 172
XXIV. A Soldier's Honor 181
XXV. The Face 190
XXVI. Roscoe Bent Breaks His Promise 199
XXVII. The End of the Trail 215
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TOM SLADE WITH THE COLORS
CHAPTER I
TOM MAKES A PROMISE
Tom Slade hoisted up his trousers, tightened his belt, and lounged
against the railing outside the troop room, listening dutifully but
rather sullenly to his scoutmaster.
"All I want you to do, Tom," said Mr. Ellsworth, "is to have a little
patience--just a little patience."
"A little tiny one--about as big as Pee-wee," added Roy.
"A little bigger than that, I'm afraid," laughed Mr. Ellsworth, glancing
at Pee-wee, who was adjusting his belt axe preparatory to beginning his
perilous journey homeward through the wilds of Main Street.
"Just a little patience," repeated the scoutmaster, rapping Tom
pleasantly on the shoulder.
"Don't be like the day nursery," put in Roy. "All their trouble is
caused by having very little _patients_."
"Very bright," said Mr. Ellsworth.
"Eighteen candle power," retorted Roy. "I ought to have ground glass to
dim the glare, hey?"
The special scout meeting, called to make final preparations for the
momentous morrow, had just closed; the other scouts had gone off to
their several homes, and these three--Tom Slade, Roy Blakeley and Walter
Harris (alias Pee-wee)--were lingering on the sidewalk outside the troop
room for a few parting words with "our beloved scoutmaster," as Roy
facetiously called Mr. Ellsworth.
As they talked, the light in the windows disappeared, for "Dinky," the
church sexton, was in a hurry to get around to Matty's stationery store
to complete his humdrum but patriotic duty of throwing up a wooden
railing to keep the throng in line in the morning.
"The screw driver is mightier than the sword, hey, Dink?" called the
irrepressible Roy, as Dinky hurried away into the darkness.
"All I wanted to say, Tom," said Mr. Ellsworth soberly, "is just this:
let me do your thinking for you--even your patriotic thinking--for the
time being. Do you get me? Don't run off and do anything foolish."
"Is it foolish to fight for your country?" asked Tom doggedly.
"It might be," retorted the scoutmaster, nothing daunted.
"I'm not going to stay here and see people drowned by submarines,"
muttered Tom.
"You won't see them drowned by submarines as long as you stay here,
Tomasso," said Roy mischievously. He loved to make game of Tom's clumsy
speech.
"You know what I mean," said Tom; "I ain't going to be a slacker for
anybody."
"You might as well say that President Wilson is a slacker because he
doesn't go off and enlist in some regiment," said Mr. Ellsworth; "or
that Papa Joffre is a coward because he doesn't waste his time with a
rifle in the trenches."
"Gee whiz, you can't say _he's_ a coward," exclaimed Pee-wee, "because I
saw him!"
"Of course, that proves he isn't a coward," said Roy slyly.
"There's going to be work, and a whole lot of it, for every one to do,
Tom," continued Mr. Ellsworth pleasantly. "There is going to be work for
old men and young men, for women and girls and boys--and scouts. And
being a slacker consists in not doing the work which you ought to do. If
a girl has a flower bed where she might grow tomatoes, and she grows
roses there instead, you might call _her_ a slacker.
"The officials in Washington who have this tremendous burden on their
shoulders have told us what _we_, as scouts (Mr. Ellsworth always called
himself a scout), ought to do. They have outlined a program for us. Now
if you run off and join the army in the hope of doing a man's work, why
then some man has got to knuckle down and do your work. See?"
"I'm sick of boring holes in sticks," grunted Tom.
"Well, I dare say you are. I never said it was as pleasant as eating ice
cream. What I say is that we must all knuckle down and do what we can do
best to help defend Old Glory. And we can't always choose our work for
ourselves. I'm going to stay here, for the present, at least, and keep
you scouts busy. And I don't consider that I'm a slacker either. If you
all stand by me and help, I can be of more service right here, just
now, than I could be if I went away."
"Then why does the government have posters out all around, urging
fellers to join the army?" said Tom, unconvinced.
"There are fellers and fellers," said Mr. Ellsworth, mimicking Tom's
pronunciation of the word, "and what is best for one isn't necessarily
best for another. These posters are for fellows older than you, as you
know perfectly well. I'm talking now of what is best for _you_--at
present. Won't you trust me? If you can't obey and trust your
scoutmaster, you couldn't obey and trust your captain and your general."
"I never said I didn't," said Tom.
"Well, then, leave it to me. When the time comes for you to join the
army, I'll tell you so, and I'll shout it so loud that you can't make
any mistake. Meanwhile, put aside all that idea and knuckle down and
help. You're just as much with the colors now as if you were in the
trenches.... You'll be on hand early to-morrow?"
"I s'pose so," said Tom sullenly.
Mr. Ellsworth looked at him steadily. No doubt it was something in Tom's
grudging manner that made him apprehensive, but perhaps too as he
looked at the boy who had been growing up before his eyes in the past
two years, he realized as he had not realized before that Tom had come
to be a pretty fine specimen and could stand unconcerned, as he
certainly would, at the most rigid and exacting physical test.
When Tom's rapid growth had brought the inevitable advent of long
trousers, arousing the unholy mirth of Roy Blakeley and others, Mr.
Ellsworth had experienced a jarring realization that the process had
begun whereby his scouts would soon begin slipping away from him.
He had compromised with Time by making Tom a sort of assistant
scoutmaster and encouraging Connie Bennett to work into Tom's place as
leader of the Elk Patrol; and he had lived in continual dread lest Tom
(who might be counted on for anything) discover his own size, as it
were, and get the notion in his stubborn head that he was too big to be
a scout at all.
But Tom had thought too much of the troop and of the Elks for that, and
a new cause of apprehension for Mr. Ellsworth had arisen which now
showed in every line of his face as he looked at Tom.
"I want you to promise me, Tom, that you won't try to enlist without my
permission. If you'll say that and obey Rule Seven the same as you have
always obeyed it, I'll be satisfied."
"How about Rule Ten?" said Tom, in his usual dogged, half-hearted
manner; "a scout has got to be brave, he's got to face danger, he's----"
"You notice Rule Seven comes before Rule Ten," snapped Mr. Ellsworth.
"They put them in the order of their importance. The men who made the
Handbook knew what they were about. The question is just whether you're
going to continue to respect Rule Seven, that's all."
Mr. Ellsworth knew how to handle Tom.
"Yes, I am," Tom said reluctantly.
"Then that's all there is to it. Give me your hand, Tom."
Tom put out his hand, and as the scoutmaster shook it his manner relaxed
into the usual off-hand way which the scouts so liked and which had made
him so popular among them.
"President Wilson wasn't in any great rush about going to war, and I
don't want you to be in a hurry to get into a uniform. You're in a
uniform already, if it comes to that. And the Secretary of War says our
little old scout khaki is going to make itself felt. I'd be the last to
preach slacking, and when it's time, if the time comes, I'll tell
you.... You know, Tom," he added ruefully, "you're getting to be such a
fine, strapping fellow that it makes me afraid you'd get away with it if
you tried. I don't like to see you so big, Tom----"
"Don't you care," said Pee-wee soothingly, "I'm small still."
"If you were old enough, I wouldn't say anything against it," Mr.
Ellsworth added. "But you're not, Tom. Some people don't seem to think
there's anything wrong in a boy's lying about his age to get into the
army. But I do, and I think you do---- Don't you?" he added anxiously.
"Y-e-es."
"Of course, you couldn't enlist without Mr. Temple's consent, he being
your guardian, unless you lied--and I know you wouldn't do that."
"You didn't catch me in many, did you?"
"I never caught you in _any_, Tom."
"Well, then----"
"Well, then," concluded Mr. Ellsworth, "I guess we'd all better go home
and get some sleep. We've got one strenuous day to-morrow."
"It's going to be a peach," said Roy, looking up at the stars. As they
started to move away, Mr. Ellsworth instinctively extended his hand to
Tom again.
"I have your promise, then?" said he.
"Y-e-s."
"I'm not stuck on that 'yes.'"
"Yes," said Tom, more briskly.
"That you won't do anything along that line till you consult me?"
"Don't do anything till you count ten," said Roy.
"Make it ten thousand," said Mr. Ellsworth.
"And after you've counted ten," put in Pee-wee, "if you decide to go,
I'll go with you, by crinkums!"
"Go-o-d-night!" laughed Roy. "That ought to be enough to keep you at
home, Tomasso!"
Tom smiled, half grudgingly, as he turned and started toward home.
"You don't think he'd really enlist, do you?" queried Roy, as he and
Pee-wee and Mr. Ellsworth sauntered up the street.
"He won't now," said the scoutmaster. "I have his promise."
"Otherwise, do you think he would?"
"I think it extremely likely."
"And lie about his age?"
Mr. Ellsworth screwed his face into a funny, puzzled look. "There's a
good deal of that kind of thing going on," he said, "and I sometimes
think the recruiting people wink at it, or perhaps they are just a
little too ready to judge by physical appearance. Look how Billy Wade
got through."
"He doesn't look eighteen," said Roy.
"Of course he doesn't. But he told them he was 'going on nineteen,' and
so he was--just the same as Pee-wee is going on fifty."
Roy laughed.
"The honor of enlisting, the willingness to sacrifice one's life, seems
to cover a multitude of sins in the eyes of some people," said the
scoutmaster. "Heroic duty done for one's country will wipe out a lot of
faults.--It's hard to get a line on Tom's thoughts. He asked me the
other day what I thought about the saying, _To do a great right, do a
little wrong._ I don't know where he rooted it out, but it gave me a
shudder when he asked me."
"He was standing in front of the recruiting station down at the
postoffice yesterday," said Roy, "staring at the posters. Goodness
only knows what he was thinking about. He came along with me when he
saw me."
"Hmmm," said Mr. Ellsworth thoughtfully.
"But I guess he wouldn't try anything like that here--the town is too
small," said Roy. "Even the recruiting fellow knows him."
"Yes; but what worries me," said Mr. Ellsworth, "is when he goes to the
city and stands around listening to the orators and watches the young
fellows surging into the recruiting places. That phrase, _Your country
needs you_, is dinging in his ears."
"He'd get through in a walk," said Roy.
"That's just the trouble," Mr. Ellsworth mused. "Tom would never do
anything that he thought wrong," he added, after a pause; "but he has a
way of doping things out for himself, and sometimes he asks queer
questions."
"Well, he promised you, anyway," said Roy finally.
"Oh, yes, that settles it," Mr. Ellsworth said. "All's well that ends
well."
"We should worry," said Roy, in his usual light-hearted manner.
"That's just what I _shan't_ do," the scoutmaster answered.
"All right, so long, see you later," Roy called, as he started up
Blakeley's hill.
Mr. Ellsworth and Pee-wee waved him goodnight. Presently Pee-wee
deserted and went down, scout pace, through Main Street, laboriously
hoisting his belt axe up with every other step. It was very heavy and a
great nuisance to his favorite gait, but he had worn it regularly to
scout meeting ever since war had been declared.